How Gordon Watson’s team gets to 600 deals a year on one appointment a day

Gordon Watson00:05

I believe and I teach my salespeople that we create our own reality. There’s a lot of teams of people getting out of the business and a lot of teams that are disbanding because they don’t know what to do. But I believe 90% of the success that we have is right here. It’s in your mind. If you believe you can do it, then you can do it.

00:28Go out and tackle that market and win.

Loida Velasquez00:45

Welcome back to a new episode of Vulcan7’s Coaches and Mentors, a series where we interview some of the best in the industry. Today we have an amazing guest. He runs a team that is doing about 600 deals or more a year. So with that being said, I would love to introduce to you Gordon Watson. So Gordon, welcome to the show.

Gordon Watson01:07

Hey. Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here.

Loida Velasquez01:09

Yes. So for everyone that’s watching that may not be familiar with you, can you share with us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got to where you’re at?

Gordon Watson01:18

Sure. I’ve been in the real estate industry now for about 38 years. Started off as an independent salesperson like pretty much all of us did.

01:29I sold somewhere over 4,000 homes over my career. 27 years ago, I started coaching and training real estate agents, and then in 2021 started my own coaching company, Watson Powers Coaching, along with my partner Steve Powers. And then in 2019 is when I started my team. So we’re going into our fifth year.

01:52Last year, my team did 528 transactions, and this year we are on track to sell over 600 homes.

Loida Velasquez02:00

That’s amazing and incredible. Congratulations on that success, ’cause I know a lot of people can’t reach that.

Gordon Watson02:08

Thank you. Thank you.

Loida Velasquez02:09

So you’ve been in the business for quite some time. You have seen the market changes, things going on.

02:17A lot of the agents that watch this show perhaps are transitioning from either being buyer’s agents or being part-time agents, and they want to tackle and be listing agents. So for that agent that’s maybe doing one or two listings a month, how can they start to take that production to the next level and maybe double it?

Gordon Watson02:37

No, that’s a great question. So there are just some basic things that you need to do. I like to say that real estate is a reoccurring conversation. The longer you do it, the more you’re gonna realize that people ask the same questions, they have the same objections, it’s the same situations over and over and over again.

02:54So the first thing that you need to do is you need to learn that language. Just like if I was going to go to live in France, I don’t speak French, but if I was gonna live in France, I would sure learn to speak French. And so you need to learn to speak the language of real estate, what to say, how to respond to people.

03:09That’s number one. Number two is you’ve gotta get a consistent daily schedule, okay? That includes prospecting. You gotta figure out when you’re gonna be following up on the leads, what leads you’re gonna be following up on, and then you’ve gotta do it consistently. There’s very few people that just start on day one and immediately are an instant success.

03:31It’s the accumulation of doing it every single day, every single day, every single day to the point that it finally starts to come together, what we call the accumulation effect, where it finally starts to come together to give them results. The third thing, Loida, that I would tell them is you have to set a goal, okay?

03:53And I recommend that you set a goal every single day. One of the things that I constantly preach to my team is I say, “Win the day,” W-I-N, win the day. What does that mean? Well, for my team, it means setting one qualified appointment every single day. ‘Cause if they set one qualified appointment a day, and let’s say they work 25 days, I don’t encourage them to work every day of the month, but let’s say they work 25 days, taking some time off.

04:22And out of those 25 days they set one appointment a day, that’s 25 appointments, right? Out of those 25 appointments, you’re gonna have some that cancel, whatever, so let’s say you go on 20. Now, if you only close 25%, then you’ve done five deals in a month just by setting one appointment a day. So if you break it down to the simple and say, “Okay, what does it take for me to win the day?

04:48I need to set one appointment, and I need to hold myself accountable to setting one appointment,” which means whatever it takes, however long you gotta prospect, don’t stop until you set that one appointment. And what you’re gonna find is it’ll start to come easier and easier and easier. And so if you’re going from one to two and you wanna double it and get up to, say, five, set one appointment a day.

05:12And if you close 25%, you’re doing five, and if you close 50%, you’re doing 10.

05:18That’s part of the advice I would give them. I hope that helps.

Loida Velasquez05:23

Yeah. No, it absolutely does, because I feel that sometimes agents, they put half the work. Maybe they say, “I’m only going to call from 8:00 to 12:00,” but they don’t set an appointment, and then the rest of the afternoon they’re not doing anything.

05:36I like to say if you don’t have anything going on, get back to prospecting, making calls, whatever that looks like for you, so you can hit that goal of setting one appointment just like you mentioned. Now, for you running a successful team doing over 600 deals a year, obviously you have certain standards and expectations of your team members.

05:55I would love for you to kind of share what that looks like, because maybe there’s some agents that are solo but are thinking of joining a team, but maybe they don’t have the discipline or the structure to be a part of that. So for you specifically, obviously to be successful, what does that look like for you in what you look for in a team member?

Gordon Watson06:18

Well, so with my team, first of all, I’ve been blessed to have a nice, big, beautiful office. I’ve got room for 35 salespeople. I don’t have 35 right now, but I’ve got space for 35, and I ask them to be to the office and start prospecting at 8:00 o’clock in the morning. Okay? I provide them their leads.

06:37I have it set up to where my team gets anywhere between 75 to 120 leads per month per person. Okay? I’ve got a CRM in place that manages the lead distribution and the organization of their leads and the follow-up of their leads. So that’s all built into the program. And then it’s just a matter of them calling and following up each and every day.

07:00We do that from 8:00 to 10:00. Then from 10:00 to 11:00 I encourage them to take a break, get any admin work caught up, and then at 11:00 o’clock every day, Monday through Friday from 11:00 to 12:00, I have a training room and we all meet in this training room and I coach and train my salespeople every day for an hour.

07:22Then the afternoons are typically then out on appointments.

Loida Velasquez07:25

Awesome. And obviously for them it’s making sure that they are disciplined and getting on the phones, whether it’s right on time at 8:00 o’clock. ‘Cause sometimes what I also see is that agents get to the office at 8:00 but they don’t start until way later, because they get distracted doing something, social media and things like that.

07:47So how do you hold the agents accountable?

Gordon Watson07:50

Sure. Well, see, first of all, we talk about there’s a difference between working and being at work. Okay? There’s a complete difference there. So I use a CRM to manage my team. Records the number of calls they make, so I can see what they do every single day.

08:08Okay? And I review it every day. And my particular leadership style is not one of beating them down and cracking the whip. No, I’m more of an encourager. Okay? I’m more of an encourager. I believe that if I can help them to accomplish the goals they’ve set, we both win. And so I’m an uplifter, I’m an encourager, I’m a supporter.

08:35And just helping them to learn what they need to learn. Virtually everybody on my team… right now I have 19 full-time active salespeople on my team. There’s only one person that even sold houses before they came on my team, and they had done it for a couple years and then got out of the business, and I got them back in the business.

08:55So other than that, everybody’s been brand new, and I teach them from the ground up. I’m patient, but I encourage them, I train them, I support them so that they know what to do. My average salesperson, we have what we call our one, two, three plan. They sell one house the first month, two houses the second month, and then three houses a month on the third month going forward.

09:21So most of my salespeople will sell six homes within the first three months.

Loida Velasquez09:26

That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing how you break that down, ’cause that is very encouraging to know that you are taking a look to see what they’re doing, and also providing feedback and seeing how you can help them achieve their goals, because it also helps you as a team leader and everyone as a whole as well.

09:46Now, I wanna quickly kind of transition to the market and what we’re seeing, because I always hear even recently agents saying a lot of buyers are holding back because of the interest rates. There might be sellers that maybe don’t wanna sell because they don’t know what to purchase or everything’s high.

10:03So how are you guys going about overcoming possibly those objections or challenges?

Gordon Watson10:09

Sure. That’s a great question. And you and some of those that listen to me might think, “Well, gee, that guy’s a little bit nutty.” Okay? But you know what? You kind of have to be. And so first of all, in my office, I’m the one that’s in charge of the culture in this office, and one of our rules is we do not talk negative.

10:31There is no negative talk. We’re not whining and complaining about the market and this and that. I believe, and I teach my salespeople, that we create our own reality. Okay? In other words, if you believe the market’s bad and you believe that nobody’s buying or selling, then guess what? It’s true, because you’re going to behave that way.

10:52In other words, it becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re gonna make your belief true.

10:59Well, we choose to believe just the opposite. We choose to believe that people are buying and selling every day. Yesterday, for example, we sold six houses just yesterday alone. Okay? So, we average…

11:11My team will sell between 50 and 60 homes a month, every month. Okay? And there’s a lot of teams of people getting out of the business, and a lot of teams that are disbanding because they don’t know what to do. But I believe 90% of the success that we have is right here. It’s in your mind.

11:32If you believe you can do it, then you can do it, and if you don’t think you can, then you can’t. And every day as a team, again, we meet from 11 to 12 o’clock. It’s a positive, uplifting, encouraging meeting where we support each other, we celebrate each other’s successes, and we walk out of there feeling good.

11:54And then we go out and tackle that market, and we win. We win.

Loida Velasquez12:00

That’s awesome. I’m glad that you’re bringing that up, because mindset is key, and how you view things also affects, I feel, the results. I hear it all the time, agents that say, “Cold calling doesn’t work.” If you already have that mindset that people are going to be upset or that it doesn’t work, you probably are not gonna get people answering the phone.

12:19I’ve seen that happening. But if I come into making calls with the mindset of, there’s a lot of families that need my help. Some of them have to sell, they have to buy. It’s almost like you attract those individuals, and you have much better conversations, and at the end of the day, you’re like, “You know what?

12:36Making calls is not that bad, and I set an appointment, and I’m going on a listing,” and it changes everything, your entire perspective on prospecting in real estate.

Gordon Watson12:45

We call it reframing.

12:49It’s kind of like, to use an overused analogy, the glass is half full or the glass is half empty.

Gordon Watson12:56

If you look at that glass as half empty, reframe it. Choose to look at it from a different perspective. So for example, I’m constantly talking to my salespeople about how we’re not trying to, quote-unquote, sell somebody. What we’re trying to do is help people. We’re trying to help people.

13:15Our job is to find people that we can help. One of the things we brought up in our team meeting today is I told them to… And this is great advice for those of you that are watching here. Create your happy clients list, okay? If you guys have been in business for any length of time at all, you’ve got some clients that were absolutely dream clients, where you wish everybody could be just like them.

13:39Well, make a list of those people and post those names in your workstation. And so whenever you’re feeling a little bit down or discouraged, just take a minute and look at those names, and kind of reflect on the transaction that you had with them, and it’s guaranteed to put you back in a positive state of mind.

13:57And then you just tell yourself, “I’m looking for more people like these people.”

Loida Velasquez14:01

It’s funny that you mention that, because I remember when I was newer in the business, my mindset, I was still working on it, and it felt like I was attracting nightmare clients.

14:15And I’m like, “What is happening?” But I was seeing everything negatively. I thought maybe I’m not good enough, or why am I not as good as this person? And then we get into this comparison where my skill level was completely different to that person, so I can’t… I’m not even in the same boat.

14:35And once I started to reframe and look at my mindset and say, “You know what? I have improved so much in the last six months,” that’s when I started to see things change and I started to attract the right clients. Everyone was happy to work with me. I did a lot of affirmations, writing that down, and it definitely worked.

Gordon Watson14:54

Oh, it’s so true. One of the things that I committed to with my team in the month of September is every morning I send them some sort of a motivational video. I’ll go out on YouTube and I’ll click daily motivation. And there’s thousands of videos out there, and I’ll pick one, and I’ll send it out there to them just to give them something positive to listen to, to start their day.

15:18It’s just critical. And the other thing we talked about in our team meeting today was just how we need to keep having fun with the business. Because when you’re excited, when you’re having fun with the business, then you wanna go out and do more deals.

15:35But when you start focusing on the negative, and there’s certainly deals that fall apart and-

15:40problems that happen, but you can’t focus on those. You gotta focus on the fun of creating the next transaction. And when you’re having fun and you’re looking forward to it, and you have that kind of an attitude-

15:52it’s amazing what we can do. I’ve got people on my team that may have a higher skill level and more experience, but they’re not necessarily producing at the highest level. The people with the best attitudes, with the best outlook and expectations of the business, they’re the ones that are producing at the highest level.

Loida Velasquez16:14

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Now, as we start to wrap this up, I would love for you to share with us more about your coaching, what you offer, and how agents can also connect with you.

Gordon Watson16:27

Sure. So my partner, Steve Powers, and myself, we coach the individual agents, we coach the small teams, and we coach the big teams.

16:36Okay? There’s a lot of people that are individuals that would like to start, develop a team. We teach you how to do that. And it’s a weekly call. Okay? Every week we have a call the same time, same day every week. Plus we have two bonus calls per month, just additional calls that we do for you and your team members.

16:59And then we make ourselves available to our clients all the time. So my clients can call Steve, or Sydney Fullen is one of our coaches as well. Many people know Sydney. She’s phenomenal. We’re blessed to have her. And so they can call Sydney, and Sydney’s clients can call me. We open ourselves up to our clients.

17:21Our job is to help them grow their business and make their lives better. And I can tell you, and I think I speak for my partner as well, this is not like a job. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m going to work. I have a blast. I love it, because the bottom line is whether it’s people on my team or people that I coach, I know that I am making a difference in their lives.

17:48And when it’s all said and done, that’s what counts, is who did you make a difference for? Who were you able to help? And we have the knowledge and skill between myself and my partner. Well, each of us, Steve’s actually done more coaching calls than myself. I know that I’ve done over 65,000 coaching calls over my career, and he’s probably somewhere around 80,000, and Sydney’s up there too.

18:11So I mean, we have tons of experience. There’s not a situation you can bring to us that we haven’t dealt with, that we can’t help you through. So hopefully some of you people that are watching this will reach out to us. We offer a free call, free consultation right up front just to get to know each other and find out whether we’re a good fit, ’cause we’re not gonna try to twist somebody’s arm into getting involved with our coaching if we don’t feel like that it’s going to be a good fit.

18:40So we offer that free consultation to just talk and get to know each other, and then if we feel like it’s a good fit, then we’ll move forward, and we really make a difference in people’s lives.

Loida Velasquez18:52

I love it. So is there a website, or what would be the website that people can go to, or is it the phone number?

Gordon Watson18:59

So just have them go to Watson, W-A-T-S-O-N, Watson Powers, P-O-W-E-R-S, WatsonPowers.com. And I might mention too that Steve and I are hosting an event, what we call the Scottsdale Summit, at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Scottsdale, Arizona, September 25th and 26th, and I know we’re gonna see Vulcan7 there.

19:23We’re really excited about that. And anybody that is interested in coming to join us, you can either attend live, and you can sign up there on our website, or if you’re just interested in joining us via live stream, we’re gonna have a live stream as well, and you can sign up for both there at WatsonPowers.com.

19:43So hopefully you guys will jump on there and share with us as we teach you guys how to make your lives better.

Loida Velasquez19:51

Yes, absolutely. If you’re watching this, I definitely recommend go to the website, get involved. Gordon, you have given so much awesome information, and I feel like anyone that’s a part of your team, it feels like it would be a family, from everything that you’re mentioning.

20:07You know, even your leadership style, how you want everyone to succeed. So again, we’re gonna make sure to put all of the links in the description box below. Thank you, Gordon, once again for being on the show. I’m sure that we’ll have you back here later on. And thank you for all of the knowledge that you dropped today.

Gordon Watson20:27

You’re very welcome. And thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.